The Balanced Scorecard methodology had evolved in the 90’s and matured as a proven framework for driving strategy in organizations. It is found that though in many corporations a defined strategy exists at the corporate level, the deployment of the same at the operational level is not uniform, and in many cases, it is absent. This causes misalignment of organizational strategy and hampers achievement of organizational goals due to poor deployment.
The cascading of strategy becomes yet more difficult in Consulting / IT organizations where unlike the manufacturing organizations, there are no fixed departments, and they are in fact replaced by Project Teams. These Project Teams are selected, based on the competencies required and based on the business requirements for a particular client, with specific deliverables and timelines. It is observed that though many organizations have excellent business strategies, there are severe lapses in the execution at the operational level. Cascading business strategy as appropriate to projects becomes a great challenge.
The Balanced Scorecard is a management decision tool. It is intended to be a framework for linking strategy with operational performance measures. In practice, it is an integrated report, usually showing diverse areas of performance an organization most values.
This is a departure from the traditional performance measurement tools such as financial reports, sales reports, production reports and customer survey reports. Each of those reports focuses on performance along a single dimension.
The term "balance" suggests that objectives and measures along different dimensions, assembled together on one sheet or screen, offer a multi-dimensional and qualitatively better view of organizational success.
Balanced Scorecard is a framework that helps organizations translate strategy into operational objectives through the mechanism of measurement. The Balanced Scorecard translates vision and strategy into a tool that effectively communicates strategic intent and drives behavior and tracks performance against the established goals.
The scorecard tracks performance across 4 "balanced" perspectives:
• Financial (How do you look to your shareholders?)
• Customer (What is your value proposition for customers?)
• Internal Processes (What is your business value chain?)
• Learning & Growth (what are the enablers for the above?)
It also has a focus on balancing long-term and short-term goals of an organization. It is observed that organizations which do not have a robust framework to deploy a “Balanced” set of goals at the Project level, fail to achieve organizational alignment and integration.
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